The Dispatch for smart phones

By Joe RhodesNEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE • Tuesday October 9, 2012 9:02 AM

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Bluebird Cafe doesn’t look like much in the daylight, especially if you’r
e just driving by. But, at night, it glows from within. A neon bluebird shines above the tiny stage
crowded with singers and musicians playing to a packed 100-seat house.

The place is holy to Callie Khouri, the Academy Award-winning writer of
Thelma & Louise — who lived in Nashville from 1978 to 1982 and is making her first
foray into network series television as creator and writer of the ABC drama
Nashville, to premiere on Wednesday. In the room, music is sacred and the people who play
it are revered; it contains the essence of what makes Nashville unique.“Whenever I’ve seen shows or
films set here, they just don’t feel like the real Nashville to me,” said Khouri, echoing a common
complaint that the city’s metro area is too often portrayed as a hillbilly Hollywood.

“This is a place that can be mocked and made fun of, and sometimes it deserves it, like any
place,” said Khouri, whose mother and sister still reside in Nashville. “But it also is an
incredibly beautiful, cosmopolitan city, and I wanted to show that to the world.”

On the surface,
Nashville could easily be mistaken for just another prime-time soap opera. It will feature
betrayals and sordid affairs aplenty, the stuff of which soaps — and country songs — are made. ABC’s
splashy promotional campaign has focused primarily on the rivalry between a young and ruthless
country-pop diva (Hayden Panettiere) and a past-her-peak superstar (Connie Britton).

But Khouri and fellow executive producer R.J. Cutler, the documentarian best-known for
The War Room, are going for something more nuanced and ambitious than the promos might
suggest. The show will include original songs from a range of writers sung by cast members and
produced by Grammy winner T Bone Burnett, who is Khouri’s husband and whose credits include
Crazy Heart and
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

“These characters are at a crossroads in their lives, and, of course, the crossroads is such a
mythic theme in American musical history,” Cutler said.

A fan of Robert Altman’s
Nashville, Cutler said the show could be considered a contemporary response to that 1975
film.

This
Nashville, like Altman’s, features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines — many of
them revolving around Britton’s character, Rayna Jaymes, the 40-year-old “reigning queen of country
music” who is trying to hold onto her artistic integrity amid competition from younger acts.